


Crux

by gloomyOptimist



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, character exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-24
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 03:34:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/895296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloomyOptimist/pseuds/gloomyOptimist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Under different circumstances, what could you have become?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bro: Isolate.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a character exploration piece--it's an exploration of the core essence of the character of Dirk Strider in both his alpha and beta iteration, mostly POV through canon events

Everything is noisy.

Even in the dead of night, sounds drift through your window from the streets below your apartment, accompanied by the heat and ambient light of the city. A dog barks, a car alarm goes off a couple of blocks away, a few young men laugh and shout with no regard to the residents sleeping around them--all contributing to the urban groan that never quite ceases. Around you, the city breathes, rattling and clanking. You’re not quite sure if you appreciate it, but you feel at home.

It is still early in the summer, and while the heat envelopes you, it is not yet stifling. It is, however, very still, and you consider briefly turning on a fan. There is a thin film of sweat beginning to form on your forehead, so you take your hat off and set it aside. You’d prefer that it didn’t start smelling from your perspiration. Besides, there’s no one around to see you anyway.

The shades stay on.

Your computer screen pulses dully with an electric blue light, and the room would be dark except for the orange glow that comes through your window. A variety of programs and feeds compete for space and attention, and even though it is very late, you know you’ll be up much longer sorting through the onslaught of information. You’re fine with this.

When you were younger, you used to think you had to do everything at breakneck speed or else you would never meet all of your ambitions. You filled every drop of time, constantly pushing yourself and grasping to reach your potential. You met people and partied and experimented and did reckless things. You brought many of those people to your bed, and you even fell in love with some of them. You fit into a few years of youth what many people never accomplished in a lifetime, multiple lifetimes. It seemed that if you didn’t take every opportunity presented to you, you would never accomplish all that you knew you could.

You were right, of course.

But you’re old enough now to understand that things change. The years have dulled your fervor, though only slightly. It takes a different form now--one that is collected and deliberate, brutal in its control and mastery. People don’t interest you anymore. In fact, you’ve grown tired of them and their messy personal affairs. Since your youth, you’ve begun to regard most people as idiots, full of insecurities and insincerities that they have no desire to address. Everyone you meet is exceedingly simple, and they try to treat you as something simple as well. They don’t understand you.

It’s not that you dislike people. You had many intimate friends, and you know the pains of love and heartbreak. Things change, and your past relationships have all slowly rotted away. You remember the emotions, but the nostalgia has eroded with time. Now, you simply can’t be bothered to put forth the effort. You have your projects, and that’s all you need.

Well, with one exception.

Dave was, of course, a huge factor in the change of your pace and lifestyle. It was a challenge that you were willing to undertake, but it was nonetheless difficult. The process has matured you immensely, and not only because you had to be considerate of a baby’s needs in every decision you made. The vulnerability of the child had forced you to open yourself and expose your heart more intimately than you ever had before. Romantic relationships are one thing--adults are already fucked up. But a child is a blank slate, an empty jar to be filled, and having that level of responsibility over another was nearly overwhelming at first.

You learned a lot since then, and after thirteen years, you’ve reached a comfortable routine. He still regards you with a childlike reverence, an admiration that has not yet melted into the realization that you, too, are a mortal human. (The parenting forums tell you that he’ll recognize that soon. They’ve also prepared you for a flood of rebellion and teenage angst.)

Leaning back in your chair, you wonder if he’s sleeping. You doubt it. A siren sounds distantly, just near enough to be heard echoing through the concrete canyons of the streets. Dave doesn’t often venture out into the living room after midnight. On occasion, he goes to the fridge to get some food, but he always shoots you a subtle apologetic nod. You both respect each others’ privacy, even though you both know all the passwords and how to get past locks. It’s a sacred fraternal pact of trust and honor, but you think it may help that you relate as brothers instead of father and son.

That was a very deliberate decision on your part. “Dad” always made your skin crawl, and when you finally downgraded to “Bro,” it felt like a weight had been lifted from your shoulders. Brothers are equal. Brothers do not have authority over the life and fate of the other. As a brother, you can fuck things up; you can afford to be distant sometimes; you can have your own future and agenda without being required to fill the needs of another.

There is also an unspoken expectation for Dave in the title. Brothers stand on equal terms. When Dave finally matures into a man, he will be your peer. You know him--he will treat that as a challenge. He will try to match your strength and prowess.

That is, perhaps, your most exciting project of all.


	2. Dirk: Contemplate.

At times you wonder what your life might be like if you had people.

It is difficult to imagine, but you still make the effort. You stare out across the vast ocean that quarantines you and ask yourself how it might be different if isolation wasn’t the cornerstone of your existence. Even Roxy shared a home with sentient beings, but for a significant portion of your life, you were alone. Your companions were manufactured--shadows of yourself, graduated from imaginary friends into something mature and tangible.

Not that you’re complaining much. This type of lifestyle suits your temperament, and your natural drive toward achievement keeps you preoccupied. Sometimes you even celebrate your solitude, reminding yourself that you could not have become so accomplished if you had to divide your time.

Your favorite hobby is overcoming your own weakness, and you have unlimited freedom to pursue it.

But there are times (minutes, hours, days) where you wonder. You feel yourself too deeply, buried in your own essence. The world enters you and tunnels straight to your core, always flowing inward, overwhelming you until you have no choice but to reroute your energy outward. You learn and labor, tinker and train, dividing your attention and your senses into manageable chunks so that your spirit can remain calm.

“Calm” is a relative term, of course.

So it goes that a level of activity which others might consider to be destructively stressful is exactly what keeps you serene. You are at ease when you are executing plans and conquering difficult obstacles, pulling strings across many levels of consciousness. You are not only capable of accomplishing many tasks simultaneously; doing so is part of what defines you.

There are times too when you stop. You lay, submerged in a pool of anhedonia, feeling the comforting whir of your internal gears slow until all activity is ceased. Those times always last too long, and you feel as if you are encased in a glass box, cold and silent. (A part of you, though, craves it. You become nothing but energy, no longer individual, a forgotten piece of the universe seeking to rejoin the void. It is both vastly emotional and distinctly dispassionate.)

The years pass.

You discover friends through colored lines of text. You slowly grow attached, until you feel that the flow between you and them has become an integral part of your identity. They offer relief in a way your desperate fragments cannot. A certain hue even excites what you might describe as love. You drink their words, and you wonder.

Then, one day, don’t need to wonder anymore.


	3. Bro: Break.

Sometimes you take a day off just to mess with your brother.

Most of the work you do can be done at home, and sometimes you have to be careful not to get too absorbed in it. You are efficient at channeling your energies into your projects, sometimes too much so--before Dave, you would go days without breaking your concentration, and the world outside your apartment would fall away into something abstract and dismissible. You’re not alone anymore, though, so you have to make a conscious effort not to let time slip by unnoticed. You force yourself to take breaks, to leave the apartment several times a week, to keep grounded in the reality beyond your own head.

Usually, you and Dave play videogames or jam about your interests. Sometimes you mix music together, although not as much as you used to because Dave wants to do more of his own thing. You still rap together sometimes. (You try not to admit that you miss when he was younger and would come seeking you out with requests to play or go into town. He always approached you tentatively, as if he knew he was interrupting something. You grew to appreciate it.)

But all children grow up, and life takes adjusting. There’s a time and a place for nostalgia, just like there’s a time and a place to plant ironic references to horror movies around the kitchen.

If you were being honest with yourself, you’d have to admit that it’s just a lot of fun to play mind games with him. He has the best reactions.

You set up a couple of cams to catch footage of the smuppet avalanche that would inevitably be released before heading up to the roof. You suspect that it would be a few hours until Dave finally climbs the stairs with Cal in tow, so you waste some time practicing with your sword. Heat is rising from the city below, and the sky seems more hazy than usual (is it the pollution that is making it so orange?).

You stop briefly when you notice the first meteor fall.

It is a somewhat unusual occurrence. You watch it land somewhere in the middle of the city and make a mental note to look into it later. It appears to be rather large. There’s little doubt that it would be in the news.

As you’re contemplating this, another meteor breaks through the atmosphere, this time further away. It landed beyond the city limits, but that is not what concerns you. If you are not mistaken (and there is a very high probability that you are not mistaken), there was no forecast of a meteor shower anytime soon. The likelihood of two rather sizeable meteors entering the earth atmosphere in nearly the same place without any predictions seems rather slim.

A few minutes pass, and another one streaks through the sky. Then another. You stand at the edge of the building, eyebrows raised, as soon meteors begin to fall with some regularity. The strangest thing about it, though, is that on more than one occasion you catch a glimpse of what appears to be a portal, twitching faintly in the sky as it spits out a meteorite before vanishing completely.

Something’s not right.

You don’t have much time to think about it, though, before Dave busts through the door with Lil’ Cal in tow, shouting about your game copy and puppet snuff films. As interesting as strange astronomical phenomena is, you have a moral obligation to hand your little brother’s ass back to him on a silver platter. It takes a little while--kid’s getting pretty good, and you’re more distracted than usual--but it’s an inevitable outcome. You kick his thirteen-year-old punk ass into the pavement, throw him your copy of Sburb, and blast off on your rocket board like the badass motherfucker you are.

RIP Lil Cal. You’ll be back soon to collect his parts and repair him.

Right now, you have some research to do.

There’s something that doesn’t sit right with you about those meteors. You get out your phone to connect to the internet and begin filtering through the various news reports. Apparently, it’s a global occurrence, and scientists are baffled. There isn’t much mention about the portals, however, except on various forums--government conspiracies, talk of alien invasion, the usual. The one thing that really catches your eye is a series of GameFAQ walkthroughs on the game you just handed to Dave. It seems odd to you that the subject of meteorites would come up consistently on every one, and that the descriptions of the event match what you saw almost exactly. Not only that, but the timestamps on the earliest of the walkthroughs far exceeds the first major reports of even the most reliable news sites and forums.

You look at the clock. You’ve been researching this for at least 45 minutes, probably more. It’s almost guaranteed that Dave is playing.

The longest running walkthrough is apparently the only one to survive the impact. It was started by someone with the username tentacleTherapist, which you immediately recognize as being one of Dave’s internet buddies. He talks to a small number of people regularly, and you make sure to watch his activity to make sure it’s safe (but, like the respectful bro you are, you refrain from reading his chatlogs...well, most of them, anyway). It doesn’t surprise you that they seem to be the only successful group, given that it is the Strider way to associate with intelligent and talented individuals. You are pleased to notice that she is very detailed in her descriptions and that she updates regularly.

According to her latest entry, Dave has gotten her into the Medium. He is now working on entering himself.

You casually wait in the apartment as he makes his way into the game, staying out of his way as he works. After the first two hours, it becomes a rather difficult trial of patience and self-restraint. The walkthrough keeps you privy to the current going-ons of the four kids, but that does little to curb your inclination towards action. Finally, you decide to at least check out the state of the neighborhood, promising to no one in particular that you wouldn’t wander too far.

As soon as you get outside, you’re glad you left. It is much more exciting to weave between flaming meteorites on your rocket board as the apocalypse descends on the world than it is to idly scroll through panic-stricken internet forums. You try to avoid getting too close to the streets--partially because that would be a death-trap, but mostly because you don’t think you’d like to see the desperate faces of the doomed below.

You do this for a while, checking out the surrounding area and assessing the rate of impacts. You keep the roof of your apartment in the corner of your eye, watching Dave pace in the distance. He seems agitated. That does not seem like a good sign.

Then, he starts to climb the radio tower.

You quickly jerk your board toward the apartment and navigate your way through the catastrophic onslaught of meteors. You don’t know what he’s doing, but scaling an iron skeleton when the sky is literally falling around him doesn’t seem like the wisest idea. As you get closer, you notice that there appears to be a floating orange globe at the top, guarding something.

Then, you notice a meteor the size of planet fucking Jupiter appear in the atmosphere en route to your rooftop.

Shit.

You barely even registered the sudden appearance before you are veering your rocket board once again. Your mind is no longer working under conscious awareness--each movement happens as if on its own accord as you barrel towards the looming disaster about to destroy most of the city. You’re dimly aware that you are holding your sword.

The thought that this might be a little foolhardy flashes briefly across your mind before you are circling widely around the girth of the monstrosity, watching Dave lose his grip, slow motion while your brain goes faster than the speed of sound as it sees the trajectory of your brother’s descent, knowing just the right second, the right angle to jump so that the board catches him--

And you’re planting your feet on its ignited surface, feeling the heat on your face, rough and roaring and behemoth, finding the sweet spot you feel in your gut must exist as your mind channels all possibilities into the one truth you need; you’re in your element, you’re in a state of perfect flow--

And you bring your sword down.


	4. Dirk: Break.

If you’re not careful, you’ll fog up your visor.

Lightning strikes through the haze of green and orange, and from your vantage point at the top of a tomb, you can see for miles. Unfortunately, there’s not really much you’d care to look at. There’s no one else on your planet save for the animate skeletons that serve as your enemies, and you’ve been here long enough for the novelty to wear off. It’s just you and your thoughts. Lately, that’s been a rather dangerous combination.

The events leading up to your group of friends entering the medium initially left you with a sense of immortality. The euphoria from finally meeting everyone and having your feelings returned by Jake almost overwhelmed you...for the first few weeks.

Turns out relationships are hard.

You’re used to difficult things. You’re used to overcoming great obstacles, to plotting out your life and maneuvering gracefully through tricky quandaries. You figured that the issues arising from maintaining relationships would be similar.

That was your first mistake.

You discovered before too long that people make everything irritatingly complicated. You can map all the pros and cons to any new venture, but once people become involved, things suddenly get convoluted with emotions and communication barriers and personal quirks. Everything becomes much more abstract, and navigating the path toward the ideal outcome becomes a clumsy dance through a web of infinite subjective variables.

You wouldn’t mind so much, except you surprise yourself with how much you actually care. You read into everything--the way your friends’ faces shift when you say something wrong, the tone of voice they take when talking about something that excites them, the slight hesitance after you say something they don’t quite know how to respond to--and it makes you second-guess yourself constantly. Sometimes you long for the days when they were text on a screen or asleep on saturated moons.

Jake is the worst offender. You have strong feelings and a deep desire to be important to him. You want him to like you, admire you, want to be around you. It was mild enough at first; even with your infatuation, you felt you were able to control your emotions. It wasn’t like you were trying to marry him, right?

Your hand twitches. You pull up the message screen and watch the cursor blink, waiting for text. You cancel the message. You fidget for a minute, pull it up again, type a few words, then delete everything. AR is trying to get your attention, but you ignore him. It’s hot, and the green glow of the planet looks less edgy and more like a disease.

Things never seem to go right. From the start, it seemed as if he was ambivalent about the relationship, like he wasn’t quite sure if he really thought of you “that way.” He was open and interested, willing to try it out, enthusiastic to reciprocate, but there was a lag in initiative that suggested a certain passivity, as if he would also be fine doing other things had this not come up. You felt pressured to impress him, to light a flame of passion--you wanted him to seek you out, to prove that he was really interested in you and not just along for the ride. It was a little thing at first...at first.

Now, he makes you painfully aware of how complicated your personality is. On your own or when chatting casually, it’s not a big deal. But when you go on to fill days together, learning about each other, or even making plans, the difficulty he has understanding the way you work becomes obvious. You thought it’d be easy after so much time online, but responding in real-time proved to be a completely different way of interacting. You’re struck with how emotionless you must seem, how much is processed under the surface. He doesn’t always understand your interests. You have to assure him sometimes that you’re enjoying yourself, that you do, in fact, want him around.

You’ve been working on dissecting which parts of yourself are contradictory clusterfucks. Results are pending.

The little urges you had to inspire excitement in Jake gradually turned into something of an obsession. Even though he is a fairly transparent person, you find him frustratingly vague when it comes to figuring out what he wants from your relationship. You could talk to him all night and then later realize that you still have no clue what he thinks about you. You want him to be decisive; you want him to give you an answer so you know how to react. You don’t know how to move forward, and the paralysis drives you crazy.

You send him messages asking him what he thinks. You invite him to do things you know he would enjoy. You do everything you can to give him what he might need from you. You honestly can’t understand what more you could do to sway him.

And yet, it seems to have the opposite effect.

The message screen is pulsing in front of your eyes again. How long has it been since the last text? Would it be a good time to send another? Would that be pushy? Would that be clingy? What is the correct algorithm to how his mind processes the time between and whether or not he deems it appropriate? If you didn’t text him for days, if you threw yourself off the top of this temple into the abyss below and expired right now, how long would it be before he noticed?

Would he notice?

What should you do? What should you _do_ and how do you phrase it and when do you send it--you’re pacing back and forth. AR continues to bug you. You wish you could take this fucking mask off.

The message cursor blinks.

Sometimes when you approach him you could swear that you see his shoulders fall. His smiles seem forced more often than they should. He isn’t excited like he was two months ago, and you can’t figure out why or what to do to remedy it, except for just give him his space--

But then you have to admit to yourself that you’re the one who’s fucked up.

You were in control at first, you thought. You knew yourself and your emotional states like you knew the ocean that ebbed below your apartment for as long as you remember...but maybe you didn’t know the ocean after all? Maybe you’re not infallible. Maybe you’re a fraud. Maybe you’re an elitist, self-absorbed prick that always thought he had his shit together when really, your head is as far up your ass as it can go. Maybe you’ve been brought to your knees by a complete and utterly disgusting lack of social skills, and that the natural aptitudes you have are devoid of one of the most important pieces--whoops, misplaced the “love and friendship” splinter of your soul! Or maybe you’re worthless except as a tool, maybe you’re obnoxious and needy, maybe you’re an emotionless robot that nobody can bring themselves to love, maybe you’re _useless_ and _annoying_ and _the biggest fucking joke in paradox space_ \--

Or maybe if Jake would quit being a little chicken-shit and put forth some effort for once, you could get somewhere. If he would _answer your fucking texts every now and then_ , like a decent fucking human being, you wouldn’t have take inventory of your entire goddamn personality--WHY exactly he can’t have the self-awareness to at least give you some sort of indication of what he wants from you is a mystery worthy of calling up Scooby Doo and his band of merry fuckwits. But no, it looks like he’s just going to hide like the stupid cowardly thoughtless useless self-absorbed narrow straight straight straight--do you disgust him? Is he just playing along to avoid hurting your feelings, even though your advances actually churn his stomach?

How many times have you kissed? How many times did he initiate it? How many times did you find yourself entwined...did he like it?

What if he didn’t?

What if he doesn’t?

There’s no one else--

You crouch at the edge of the temple. You’re painfully aware of how hot your face is, how wet and shaky, and you can’t seem to control your breathing.

It takes a great deal of self control not to rip your mask off.


	5. Bro: Contemplate.

You’re fairly certain you’re the only casualty, at least for the moment.

You’re not sure what happened to Dave, but you think he vanished into the pendant necklace he was wearing. You think that means he is okay--you know he wasn’t dying before he vanished, (although seeing the sword through his chest was a shock at first, until it was obvious he was fine). Maybe turning into an orange ghost-tailed half-bird made him immortal?

Or maybe he was already dead to begin with? With all the strange things happening today, you wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the possibility.

Maybe that means that when you die, you’ll turn into a colorful, angel-winged spirit as well.

You cough slightly, disrupting the sword lodged in your torso. It sharpens the world, a jolt of painful electricity that sends the darkness at the edge of your vision into momentary retreat. Before long, the world begins to dull again.

The ground is sticky beneath you. You’re aware of the way your leather glove feels against your palm as you twitch your fingers through the widening puddle of blood. It’s among the only things you’re aware of--the sky fades above you. Your heart beats heavy and slow, and while you can’t hear it, you can feel the pressure through your head.

You think Dave is okay.

You’re trying to decide how you feel about this situation. You’re not panicking, but that might be due to shock. It seems like panic would take a lot of energy right now. Should you be panicking? You’re filled with a very slight sense of...dread? Remorse? An echo of despair?

It’s not necessarily unpleasant.

Have you felt this before?

It’s not as if you weren’t aware that you would have to die someday, and all things considered, you’re pretty satisfied with this method of death. You doubt growing old and dying peacefully would have suited you.

(Although you’ve changed as you got older--maybe by the time you reached ripe old age, the idea would have been comfortable...maybe Dave would have had a family?)

In any case, you couldn’t ask for a more badass death than a swordfight with a pitch-black humanoid dog with tentacle powers on top of a giant record suspended over lava. Yes, you’re satisfied about the conditions surrounding your death.

Maybe you’ll become like Dave, colorful and winged.

Maybe it’ll just be blackness.

How long does it usually take?

Dave--

You shift to look over at where you think the pendant is. You’re not sure where it is, and you can’t get your body to follow your head. You can’t see very well--shapes, some colors. Is he okay in there? You mean to ask, but your head rolls, and you can’t seem to move it. When you try to shift again, a gurgle begins in your chest, bubbling through your mouth. You swallow.

What would Dave’s family have been like? Would he have wanted one? He would have been popular with the ladies in a few years.

You won’t be able to get to those raps you’d been meaning to write.

There’s a sword lodged in your stomach.

You are dying.

For a land of lava, it’s remarkably cold. That thought seems stuck in your mind for a few seconds before drifting away again.

Your hand twitches blindly towards the pendant.

You can’t seem to move

you can’t feel your heart

just the pressure in your head

each beat clanks

rattles

and

 

stops

 


	6. Dirk: Isolate.

It’s been a while since you’ve built something.

You assemble a metal frame and fit it carefully with parts you’ve managed to salvage from your apartment. In a bit, you’ll test it to make sure the electricity runs uninhibited through the wiring, that all of the processes properly control the network of gears and mechanics. It’s a fairly small machine, mostly purposeless and with limited AI.

You aren’t keen on creating anything that would reflect your personality back at you.

You know most of your problems are internal. The events leading up to your god tier rebirth forced you to accept that you have a lot of shit to work out. The worst part is that you’re not sure you’ll ever be able to.

You focus intently on sliding a delicate chip into place. The world has long since faded out of your perception.

Relearning how to embrace time alone was difficult at first, but it proved to be crucial. The multiplicity of your personality was never made to be exhibited in its completeness, and human interaction, when unchecked, tested that far beyond what you should have let it. Allowing another person to be close to you proved to be destructive--your brand of caring thrives in your core, calm and steadfast, but when someone pulls it from you, when they bury into your psyche, you fracture.  

Tell yourself: solitude is not a punishment. Rinse and repeat.

You don’t feel rage or passion or desperation--your mind is quiet. The splinters you had have faded away, and no one is relying on you. You tell yourself that it’s a freedom to feel no obligation to anyone right now, and sometimes you manage to believe it. You feel a little spent, a little weary--but you also feel whole.

It doesn’t quite feel like you’re operating correctly yet, but it’s nice anyway.

The little robot has its last moving part installed, and you plug it into your computer to set up a few drivers. It whirs to life, its gears and fans spinning feverishly as it stands up and glances around. It’s kind of cute.

To be honest, you’re content with this. Not necessarily happy, but content for the time being. You care about your friends, you would die for them...but you felt like you had to destroy parts of yourself to interact “normally,” at least on a constant basis. While the whole stereotypical teenager “you don’t understand me” thing was never something you wanted to subscribe to, you couldn’t help the persistent sense that they didn’t get you or the way you operate. It was there, gnawing at you, and the more you tried to fall in line with how you should be, the more fucked up you felt. And the worst part was you had no clue how to express this sense of unease to them. You analyzed yourself, dissected yourself--and you still didn’t know how to begin explaining yourself. It felt like every action and intention was part of a larger framework made of something you couldn’t really change.

You hit a wall, and you kind of hated that.

A pop up window lets you know that the drivers installed successfully, and you disconnect the little guy from the machine. You’ll need to keep him plugged in later to charge him, but you want to run a few tests and make sure everything checks out first. He looks up at you, and you give him a little nod. Without hesitation, he boldly strides forward and begins pumping a beat with heavy bass, pairing it with a sick breakdance routine. There are a few hiccups here and there, and there’s a brief period when he’s spinning that the music skips, but overall it’s a pretty good performance. You give the petite dude a thumbs-up when he strikes a chill-as-fuck little finishing pose, then you plug him back in and start to troubleshoot.

You’ve been told that you have high expectations for people, and at first you were pretty resistant to the idea. People screw up sometimes--any dumbfuck with half a brain knows that. But the more you think on it, the more you begrudgingly accept that it might be true. It’s not that you can’t accept people as they are--it’s that you can’t see someone without also seeing their potential. In Jake you saw drive, ambition, willful curiosity, and all of those things were true enough part of who he was...but he had a lot of personal stuff to work through. He couldn’t keep barreling forward, couldn’t just willpower through his limits the way you could...couldn’t keep up with you.

Just like, in the end, you couldn’t slow down to sync up with him.

It’s not his fault, obviously. People trek through life at different paces. But you fucked up in hoping that he could rival your drive. At the time, that was all you had to hold on to, and, if you were perfectly honest with yourself, you’re a little terrified that you’ll never be able to find someone that can match your pace. You’re self-sufficient and self-assured...but you’re not a machine, and you want to care.

Your new miniature friend watches you while you inspect his programming. You don’t feel great about your prospects right now...but you are content, and that’ll get you by. This is okay for now--not ideal, but could be worse. Dramatics were never your thing, and you didn’t really want to be the type of person that would sullenly declare that they’re “better off alone.”

But maybe there’s some truth to that after all. 


End file.
